As many of my long time readers are aware, I fit into the Venn diagram of research scientists and 3D printing enthusiasts. Add in an interest in medical research, and one can see why this latest scientific breakthrough caught my attention this week.

Biomedical researchers have finally been able to 3D print human tissue.

Technically scientists have already produced 3D printed tissue, but there has always been a major obstacle to producing functioning organs. When organs grow naturally, they deve...
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By now I am certain that everyone has heard the most uplifting news of the year - the first COVID-19 vaccine has received approval for use and limited supplies are now being distributed to the most vulnerable members of our society.

However there is a more interesting aspect to this vaccine, at least to scientist such as myself, in that it is the first human vaccine to use the mRNA techniques that were first proposed over twenty-five years ago. (Not to be confused with the dreaded MRSA infecti...
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By now probably everyone has heard the same standard information on preventing the spread of COVID-19/Coronavirus/"The Lastest Big Fear", but in keeping with the trend of repeating information, here is what Health Canada is saying:  

"Canadians should continue to think ahead about the actions that they can take to stay healthy and prevent the spread of any illness, especially respiratory infections.

Now and always during cold and flu season, stay home if you are sick. Encourage those you know a...

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Welcome everyone to the first regular article of the new decade!

And as a result of recent medical testing, the subject that I have selected for today's entry is the mathematics of reconstructing medical magnetic resonance images - or MRIs.

Some of you may recall a pair of articles that I published last June on the qualitative meaning of the Fourier transform and how it applied to reconstructing medical computed tomography images. In those two articles I provided a very basic - and possibly ov...
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Sometimes in life strange coincidences happen. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote an article on the science behind computed tomography scanners that are ubiquitous in modern hospitals. Then today there is an article in the local newspaper reporting that the hospital I was at in April has just purchased and installed a PET/CT medical imaging device. And so rather than accept this as a random coincidence, I will take it as a sign that my readers would like to know more about this imaging meth...
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In yesterday's article I demonstrated an intuitive explanation of the Fourier transform, which is used in nearly every branch of physics and mathematics. It allows an image to be stored in terms of its properties, such as average brightness and weighting of different regions of the image, and therefore is more useful for data analysis than a bitmapped image would be.

Today I will demonstrate one of the many applications of the Fourier transform. As promised, today I will be demonstrating how a...
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Normally I would not comment on political stories or news items about funding announcements, but I will be making an exception today as this news item not only concerns a major particle accelerator in Canada, but also the facility where I did a significant portion of my own research when I started out as a graduate student. (Which also means I may be a little biased on this particular item :) )

For those of you who are not familiar with this story, last Thursday the prime minister of Canada ...
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This week our society got a little closer to the world of Star Wars, as a result of the DEKA project and inventor Dean Kamen. After eight years of development and testing, the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. (and presumably soon other regulators around the world) have approved the first prosthetic arm that can be controlled entirely by signals from the brain. 

This project was funded by DARPA (and therefore the Pentagon) as a means of aiding veterans and other amputees to regain usage...
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This past week the New England Journal of Medicine reported an interesting advance in prosthetic limbs - the development of nerve controlled robotic limbs. The original article can be accessed here.

Although robotic hands and arms*, and even a few experimental legs have been built before in robotics labs around the world, this new result incorporates the patient's original nerves in a new way. Specialized surgeons redirect the severed nerves into part of the thigh muscle, resulting in small mu...
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By now most of the sort of people who read my blogs are aware of the rise of 3D printing. These are the new machines that use molten plastic (or other substances) to print objects layer-by-layer. They are already being used to produce everything from cable clips, to replacement parts, to toys, to sculptures, and as the prices are now dropping below the $1000 range they can be expected to be a common household item over the coming decade. 

However researchers at Princeton University have found...

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There is an interesting new research study in the field of neuroscience that I thought deserved a comment. (I must admit as well that I haven't read all the details yet, so I could be incorrect or inaccurate - anyone who is seriously interested in this subject should read the original work instead of relying on my summary)

Scientists have finally been able to communicate indirectly with patients who are in a vegetative state.  The method involves placing patients inside of an fMRI machine, whi...
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For those who would like to help with the search for a cure for cancer, but lack the PhD and million-dollar laboratory, there is a new project online called ClicktoCure. After a brief tutorial online, users look at microscope images of tumor samples and identify different types of cells. Then the scientists running the project can compile the data to analyze trends and hopefully find improved methods of treating cancers.
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There is an interesting result from the cancer research community today, which could be a major breakthrough in treatment methods (although it is admittedly very unscientific).

An oncology researcher in the U.S. had been diagnosed with leukemia several years back, and had undergone several rounds of chemotherapy. Unfortunately each time his cancer would go into remission and then return again later. The latest rounds of treatment were not having any significant effect at all.

So his fellow rese...
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There has been an interesting announcement from one of the teams at the TRIUMF national laboratory on the subject of medical isotope production. They are claiming that they have been able to produce a radioactive isotope known as Technetium-99m in a particle accelerator / cyclotron instead of a nuclear reactor. If there results hold up to scrutiny (which they should) and if it is economical, this could have a major impact on medical physics and on government policies on nuclear reactors.

Many ...

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